I like how if I'm not home the ups guy puts my packages in the flower bed.

 

Honestly building is my favorite part, makes me want to sell my server and start again. Probably why I do the plugins, so I can tinker. Next build will be substantially more expensive, ill be getting all the bells and whistles next go round.

Unboxing and building. Just realized an oversight... This mobo only has 1 connector for case fan. So all other fans need to be hooked only to PSU, I guess? That's not optimal that they would just run on full all the time. I'd prefer that the fans can be controlled by mobo to spin slower or faster when needed.

Lots of choices here including some that use temperature.

Lots of choices here including some that use temperature.

Any specific recommendations? Is it possible for auto-temp control, or just a manual knob adjustment for speed?

Lots of choices here including some that use temperature.

Any specific recommendations? Is it possible for auto-temp control, or just a manual knob adjustment for speed?

No not in particular.  The ones with temperature sensors would achieve your auto-temp control.  The cheaper models just use the dials to control speed.  Another option would be this splitter. The disadvantage is that all fans spin up and down together.  If that isn't a problem it would be the cheapest option.

I'm up and running!!

 

I'm pretty happy with how the case came together. For now I'm just using one case fan, the 140mm on the top rear of the case. That will be enough air flow for a while until I can upgrade to a full controller. For now I have only a single drive, so not much heat. I threw in a single 300GB sata drive I had laying around, just to get the server up and functional. I'll be adding 3TB drives one-at-a-time as the budget allows. I expect to have three by the end of the year.

 

I installed SimpleFeatures (beautiful interface!) and unMenu. I still don't know how to interact and manage this thing. I've read the FAQ and Getting Started wikis. But simple things like where do I keep track of disk operating temperatures?

 

Here is a crappy pic of my basement setup. From L-R, T-B...

 

D-Link DNS321 2 bay NAS (not very fast but has served me very well for a few years)

Netgear 16 port Gigabit JGS516 unmanaged switch

Cisco 1841 router (Pretty old but works so much better than a Linksys. Have a Linksys WRT300n with dd-wrt wired up as my access point upstairs).

Old HP MedaCenter case, but all new Core i3 guts inside. This is my main server box that I run headless. Currently running Windows 7 with a bunch of VMs in Virtualbox. One of these days I'll convert it to ESXi.

The awesome looking black case in the middle is my new UnRaid server!!

The crappy old Dell is a P4 machine someone gave me for free. Hasn't been booted in 3 years. In the process of donating it to a friend for his 11-year old kid to use as a Minecraft server.

The disk temps will be on the main page of the GUI where it shows the array status. Disk temps are not available while the disk is spun down. Currently I do not believe unraid tracks the disk temp history, but the disk info page should allow you to get the smart info from the drives and should give the min-max temps.

Disk temps are not available while the disk is spun down.

Ah that's why! I was wondering why it was there at first but went away. Make's sense, and would be a good little tidbit to include in the FAQ. Or maybe it is there and I missed it.

Just an update. My server has been running perfectly for over a year. I now have a 3TB WD Red as the parity drive, a 300GB 7.2k RPM for cache, then for data a 2TB WD Red, and a random 1TB and 500GB I had laying around. So, 3.5TB of usable storage space at the time, with room to add more when needed. Will probably buy another 3TB WD Red in the near future.

 

I've updated the code regularly when Tom puts out updates. So I'm fully up to to date.

 

I was running unmenu, but got rid of it because I didn't feel I needed it. I was also running simplefeatures UI, but removed that to instead use Tom's new GUI. I prefer to keep everything stock if possible.

 

Thanks to all for the advice in this thread and others along the way. I still read/lurk here a few times a week, and enjoy reading the discussions.